Laudator Temporis Acti

Salvian, On the Governance of God 7.2.8 (tr. Jeremiah F. O'Sullivan, with his note):

Nobody doubts that the Aquitainians and the Nine Peoples⁴ possessed the best part of all Gaul. It is a land productive in its fertility, and not only fertility, but pleasantness, beauty, and luxury, which are sometimes preferred to fertility. In that part of Gaul the whole region is, so to say, interwoven with vines. Its meadows are flowered. Its fields are ploughed, or planted with fruit trees, or filled with delighful woods. The land is well watered with fountains, interspread with rivers, and rich in harvests. Truly, the holders and masters of that land seem to have possessed not so much a portion of that soil as an image of paradise.

⁴ The Nine Peoples inhabited the extreme south-west corner of Gaul, bounded approximately by the Garonne River.

nemini dubium est Aquitanos ac Novempopulos medullam fere omnium Galliarum et uber totius fecunditatis habuisse, nec solum fecunditatis, sed, quae praeponi interdum fecunditati solent, iucunditatis voluptatis pulchritudinis. adeo illic omnis admodum regio aut intertexta vineis aut florulenta pratis aut distincta culturis aut condita pomis aut amoenata lucis aut inrigua fontibus aut interfusa fluminibus aut crinita messibus fuit, ut vere possessores ac domini terrae illius non tam soli istius portionem quam paradisi imaginem possedisse videantur.